(LifeSiteNews) — A clip posted to X (formerly Twitter) by GB News commentator Lee Harris, in which a teacher calmly interrogates a student on why he believes J.K. Rowling is “transphobic,” has gone viral, racking up a whopping 36 million views and 36,000 reposts. It’s just over four minutes long, and well worth your time:
This is utterly brilliant. A student accuses @jk_rowling of being transphobic. This teacher skilfully dissects the claim and challenges it by asking questions.
He teaches not what to think, but how to think critically.
Watch until the end.
You see the epiphany in real-time. pic.twitter.com/x00gWdOugc— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) February 3, 2024
The student asks the teacher if he still liked Rowling’s work “despite her bigoted opinions.”
“So let’s get specific, though. Let’s define ‘bigoted opinions’. What opinions are bigoted?” the teacher responds. “We’re going to treat this as a thought experiment. I’m not going to say what is right or wrong or what way to think. The goal is to learn how to think, not what to think. Yes, when you say bigoted, you are starting with the conclusion that ‘given her bigoted opinions’. So let’s first start with, Does she have bigoted opinions? So, when you say bigoted opinions…”
Student: “She’s had a history of being extremely transphobic, I’ve heard.”
Teacher: “You’ve heard, so what? Can you give me an example?”
The student reads several Rowling tweets, and methodically, they dissect them. With each question from the teacher, the student realizes that his assumptions were… well, assumptions based on a narrative he had absorbed that had nothing to do with what Rowling had actually said. This exchange in particular was both illuminating and amusing:
Teacher: “So let’s pause. Let’s not go with what other people are saying. Let’s try to learn to critically think. So let’s analyze the tweet ourselves. So that statement, do you see anything problematic? Disregarding other people’s opinions.”
Student: “Um, she did try [to] pin some things on a specific group of people.”
Teacher: “Where is she doing that? Can you read that?”
Student, reading the tweet in which Rowling notes that trans activists targeting women for stating the truth about biological sex is disgraceful: “’But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real.’”
Teacher: “So when I hear that, I’m interpreting that as meaning… if a woman says there’s a difference between male and female, then she’s attacked as transphobic. I think that’s what she’s saying by ‘attacking someone for stating that sex is real.’”
Student: “That’s exactly what she’s saying.”
Teacher: “Is that transphobic for you?”
Student: “So to me, no. Stating that sex is real is not transphobic, it is simply a fact of life. Exists.”
Teacher: “So is there anything you disagree with in that tweet?”
Student: “Uh, in that tweet, I can’t really see anything that I myself don’t agree with. But I can see why some people would think: ‘Oh, this is offensive, we can’t have that here.’”
READ: The EU’s long-term plan to criminalize ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’
The clip already has over 5,000 comments, so it has clearly struck a nerve. Conservatives and other critics of gender ideology are understandably enthused. Lee Harris called the clip “utterly brilliant.” Rod Dreher called it “riveting” and “fantastic.” A few thousand other commenters agreed. Which is true, I suppose, but I have to admit, my reaction after watching the video was more along the lines of: Wow. A teacher employing the simple and millennia-old Socratic method of making students defend basic statements is now considered a feat of genius. That, I think, may be a more potent commentary on the state of our education system than anything I’ve seen in a long time. If this teacher is the exception — and I’m afraid that’s true — what are the rest of them doing?
If the student’s responses are any indication, many teachers are just feeding kids LGBT ideology through a funnel. The student didn’t even ask what the teacher thought of Rowling’s “transphobia” — he merely assumed it, based on what he’d absorbed by osmosis, and jumped straight to the question of whether or not her work should be rejected. After four minutes of dialogue, it turned out the student basically agreed with everything Rowling had to say. That’s literally all it took — and almost nobody is doing it. No complicated deprogramming; no fierce apologetics; no mandatory viewing of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman? Just a series of calm questions, and a request for thoughtful answers.
This is one of the transgender movement’s dirty little secrets: When it comes to actual facts, they really are a paper tiger. It just takes someone with the quiet courage to play the part of the persistent toddler for five minutes: “Why? How? When?” over and over again.
